Gerd Leonhard’s thoughts, finds and other comments on the future of ethics in a digital world

“It’s shown us—and not for the first time—how the same communication tools that can connect strangers in far-flung parts of the world can also be used to disseminate gas chamber memes and death threats. It’s shown us how the same platforms that put a world of facts and information at our fingertips can just as easily be used to undermine basic truths. It’s shown us that our most personal communications—so many of them digital—are exceptionally vulnerable to anyone with a vendetta and that the online masses, typically so precious about their own privacy, would be all too eager to see what we’ve got to hide. And we all have something to hide.”

“All of this is promising. But for blockchain to go beyond pilots, the technology needs a system of transparent governance. Remember what guided the development of the internet: not-for-profit groups like the Internet Engineering Tas Force and the World Wide Web Consortium. Their involvement gave businesses confidence that the internet would be stable and based on open standards.

The same must be true for blockchain. More than 80 leading finance and technology organizations, including IBM, have joined the Linux Foundation Hyperledger, a project aimed at creating an enterprise-grade blockchain framework. More than 600 additional firms have already applied to join the consortium.”

“Perhaps the greatest danger may not stem from smart machines taking over but rather from us humans becoming smart machines ourselves, as the INSEAD professor and author Gianpiero Petriglieri once put it. In other words: automation itself has become an automatism. As a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is slowly but surely infiltrating our hitherto humanist values, how we think and how we act. This goes deeper than mere automatibility at work.”

“In an age of anxiety, the words sound so reassuring: predictive policing. The first half promises an awareness of events that have not yet occurred. The second half clarifies that the future in question will be one of safety and security. Together, they perfectly match the current obsession with big data and the mathematical prediction of human actions.”

“Consider for example the extent to which we have already abdicated the sovereignty of being human. Have you noticed, for example, your immediate distrust of a hotel or restaurant that is not listed or recommended online? Have you checked someone’s profile on LinkedIn before you responded to a meeting request? Have your powers of mental computation (okay, never excellent, let’s admit) actually vegetated and languished alongside online calculators? Has your sense of direction deepened or weakened as a result of Sat Nav, Google Maps and Waze? Could it be that we are actually getting dumber as robots are getting smarter? Are we gradually turning into Eloi from HG Wells’ Time Machine, privileged but effete masters who have lost the muscle to work and dynamic to decide for themselves?”

“And just last month, several leading AI companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, formed the Partnership on AI to try to advance public understanding and develop some shared standards.

Yet the ‘deploy and comply’ approach can be ad hoc and reactive, and industry efforts can prove inadequate if they lack sufficient critical voices and independent contributors. The new AI partnership is inviting ethicists and civil-society organizations to participate. But the concern remains that corporations are relatively free to field test their AI systems on the public without sustained research on medium- or even near-term effects.”

It matters how a technology is researched and how it enters the world. For example, The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in the United States recently issued a landmark report that takes a precautionary approach to the use of gene drives. Gene drives are technologies, which in combination with CRISPR Cas9 gene editing, can exponentially increase the prevalence of specific genetic elements in a whole population of certain kinds of wild plants or animals. Right now, for example, gene drives are being considered as a way of controlling, or even eradicating, mosquitoes that are disease vectors for human illnesses, like malaria and Zika. The National Academies’ report encourages the development of gene drive technology, but calls for carefully paced research, first in laboratory settings and small field studies, before engineered organisms are released into the wild.”

“The point is, we need today’s big thinkers thinking big. Think like you did when you were watching Star Trek or Star Wars or Inspector Gadget. Think like the kids I meet every year at the White House Science Fair. We started this event in 2010 with a ­simple premise: We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated but the winner of the science fair. Since then, I’ve met young people who are tackling everything from destroying cancer cells to using algae to produce clean energy to distributing vaccines to remote areas of the world—all before most of them can even vote.”

“t turns out that humans can form emotional bonds with a “social technology,” as these systems are called, without true artificial intelligence. People are good at anthropomorphizing objects, and this tendency can be enhanced by the right auditory and visual cues.

Last week Toyota Motor announced a robot child designed to appeal to the growing ranks of the childless in Japan. Hasbro has created a line of pet robots designed for the elderly.

Some studies suggest these kinds of robots can yield benefits similar to owning actual pets.

None of this surprises Heather Knight, a researcher of “social robotics” at Stanford University. “Sociability is the interface between people,” says Dr. Knight.

The point of a truly social interface is that it is the same as no interface at all. No screens, no pointing devices, no unfamiliar conventions. Conversation, with all its quirks and “inessential” chitchat, is simply how humans interact with each other. Soon, it will be how we interact with machines as well.”

Digital Ethics by Futurist Gerd Leonhard

Gerd Leonhard, Futurist and Humanist, Author, Keynote Speaker, CEO The Futures Agency, Zurich / Switzerland
Gerd Leonhard is a hunter and gatherer of human values from the future. From culture and society to commerce and technology, Gerd brings back the news from the future so business and society leaders can make better choices right now. In his latest book, Technology vs Humanity, Gerd explores the key ethical and social questions which urgently require an answer before we increasingly abdicate our very humanity. For organizations in the grip of disruption, Gerd supplies visionary insights and concentrated wisdom that informs key decisions makers today. A musician by origin, Gerd Leonhard has now redefined the vocation of futurist as a new humanist.
Gerd was listed as one of the top 100 influencers in technology by Wired magazine (2015).